This weekend, President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama attended the annual Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's awards dinner. The president was the keynote speaker and during his speech, he paid tribute to the Black women who led the Civil Rights Movement, NBC news reports.

"Women were the foot soldiers. Women strategized boycotts. Women organized marches," Obama said in his address at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's annual awards dinner. "Even if they weren't allowed to run the civil rights organizations on paper, behind the scenes they were the thinkers and the doers making things happen each and every day, doing the work that no one else wanted to do."

President Obama also took the time to discuss the economic state of Black women in America.

“It makes a mockery of our economy when black women make 30 few cents for every dollar a white man earns,” he said. “When women of color aren’t given the opportunity to live up to their God-given potential, we all lose out on their talents. We’re not as good a country as we can be. We might miss out on the next Mae Jemison, or Ursula Burns, or Serena Williams or Michelle Obama.”

"We have to do more than just say we care. Say we will put put our women on a $10 bill. Although, that's a good idea. We have to make sure they're getting some $10 bills. That they're getting paid properly. We have to let our actions to the talking," Obama said.

The dinner posthumously honored Amelia Boynton Robinson who helped organize the Bloody Sunday march to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965. She held the hand of President Obama as she marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the march this year. She died last month at age 104.

Photo: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

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